Mosaic Quilts!

Victoriana Quilt Designs posted a link to the most fantastic web tool!  The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a site where you can upload a photo and turn it into a pattern for a mosaic quilt.  You can find it at http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/quilts/patchworkhttp://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/quilts/patchwork.

You can select the shape (square, portrait or landscape), the number of colors (from 5 to 20), and the complexity.  For a square, that ranges from 10 x 10 squares to 30 x 30 units including squares and triangles.

Medium resolution (20x20, 20 colors)

Original photo

My approach had been to create a square grid (I used Excel) and put the photo behind it.  I printed out several copies and then started assigning colors to each square.  Eventually I decided to use triangles, as well, to capture the tips of the flames.  Using triangles, here's what the V&A Patchwork Pattern Maker came up with:

Advanced resolution (30 x 30 units with triangles, 20 colors)

It's amazing how good this looks!  It's hard to see it here, but try this:  click on the images of the original photo and this pattern and save both.  Paste them into a document, make them the same size and view them side-by-side.  Incredible!

The pattern includes basic cutting instructions as well.

 


I'm not sure which resolution I'll use.  I had planned to make a quilt 20 units across (plus a border) using 2" units (unfinished).  Using 30 units across, either the squares will be really small (not to mention the triangles!) or the quilt will be bigger than anticipated.  Or maybe I'll just do the medium version, which is basically what I'd worked out before.  Either way, I'll need more fabric!  :-D